Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary, 8640 Dahila Street, Thornton, CO (2026)

09/04/2026

🚨 EMERGENCY FOR OUR MOST MAJESTIC FRIEND 🚨

Volodymyr, also known here as Papa Swan, found his way to us in 2022 after being abandoned in the city.

During that year’s drought, he and his mate became separated. For months, these two devoted birds were alone, searching and waiting, until they were both finally rescued and brought here. Their reunion was one of the most moving we have ever witnessed.

Swans form extraordinarily strong bonds and often remain devoted to the same partner for life. Their time apart was excruciating. Finding each other again meant everything.

Unfortunately, Papa Swan’s time surviving in the city left him with a souvenir far less beautiful.

He has always walked with a slight limp, which we believed was caused by the arthritis commonly seen in large, older swans. But over the past few weeks, that limp became significantly worse. Eventually, he no longer wanted to bear weight on the leg or even come outside to swim.

Extensive X-rays, ultrasound imaging and bloodwork revealed a very thin piece of wire approximately 1½ centimeters long lodged inside his gizzard.

Waterfowl living and feeding in polluted waterways commonly ingest pieces of metal. Sometimes those objects remain harmless for years. But they can also migrate into dangerous places, cause infection or expose a bird to toxic metals such as lead or zinc.

Papa Swan is now receiving four different medications, and the turnaround has been remarkable. He is bearing weight, moving around and swimming again, nearly back to the swan we know.

But his test results also show that his body is fighting an infection we cannot yet fully locate. His improvement does not mean that the danger has passed.

He will need to remain on all four medications for three weeks. At the end of that course, he must return to our board-certified avian veterinarian for repeat bloodwork, X-rays and ultrasound imaging. We need to determine whether the infection has resolved, whether the wire has moved and whether it is beginning to threaten any surrounding tissue.

Our best-case scenario is that his body walls the wire off and it becomes a harmless, permanent passenger. Removing an object from the gizzard would be extremely invasive and high-risk, even in the hands of a brilliant avian specialist. If the wire migrates somewhere more dangerous, however, surgery may become his only option.

Papa Swan’s veterinary care has already cost well over $1,000 this month. Across the sanctuary, an extraordinary number of serious cases have pushed August’s vet bills beyond $6,000, approximately three times our usual monthly veterinary budget.

We urgently need help replenishing our Emergency Veterinary Fund so we can cover Papa Swan’s upcoming diagnostics, continue his medications and be prepared if surgery becomes necessary.

Swans can live for 30 years or more. After everything Volodymyr and his sweet Odette endured, abandonment, the drought, the months of separation and finally finding their way back to one another, they deserve as many years together as we can possibly give them.

We are committed to doing everything within our power to help him make a full recovery.

If you can donate toward his care, please do. Every gift, regardless of its size, helps us protect the life these two fought so hard to rebuild together.

If you cannot donate, sharing their story is an equally meaningful way to help us reach the people who can.

For Volodymyr. For the mate who waited for him. And for all the years they still deserve together. Help us save his life once again.

Venmo:
Please make sure it is the account without any additional characters. Last four digits: 8541.

PayPal: [email protected]
Zelle: [email protected]
Website: https://buy.stripe.com/3cs2bAc8e2s06He8wx

09/04/2026

🚨 EMERGENCY FOR OUR MOST MAJESTIC FRIEND 🚨

Volodymyr, also known here as Papa Swan, found his way to us in 2022 after being abandoned in the city.

During that year’s drought, he and his mate became separated. For months, these two devoted birds were alone, searching and waiting, until they were both finally rescued and brought here. Their reunion was one of the most moving we have ever witnessed.

Swans form extraordinarily strong bonds and often remain devoted to the same partner for life. Their time apart was excruciating. Finding each other again meant everything.

Unfortunately, Papa Swan’s time surviving in the city left him with a souvenir far less beautiful.

He has always walked with a slight limp, which we believed was caused by the arthritis commonly seen in large, older swans. But over the past few weeks, that limp became significantly worse. Eventually, he no longer wanted to bear weight on the leg or even come outside to swim.

Extensive X-rays, ultrasound imaging and bloodwork revealed a very thin piece of wire approximately 1½ centimeters long lodged inside his gizzard.

Waterfowl living and feeding in polluted waterways commonly ingest pieces of metal. Sometimes those objects remain harmless for years. But they can also migrate into dangerous places, cause infection or expose a bird to toxic metals such as lead or zinc.

Papa Swan is now receiving four different medications, and the turnaround has been remarkable. He is bearing weight, moving around and swimming again, nearly back to the swan we know.

But his test results also show that his body is fighting an infection we cannot yet fully locate. His improvement does not mean that the danger has passed.

He will need to remain on all four medications for three weeks. At the end of that course, he must return to our board-certified avian veterinarian for repeat bloodwork, X-rays and ultrasound imaging. We need to determine whether the infection has resolved, whether the wire has moved and whether it is beginning to threaten any surrounding tissue.

Our best-case scenario is that his body walls the wire off and it becomes a harmless, permanent passenger. Removing an object from the gizzard would be extremely invasive and high-risk, even in the hands of a brilliant avian specialist. If the wire migrates somewhere more dangerous, however, surgery may become his only option.

Papa Swan’s veterinary care has already cost well over $1,000 this month. Across the sanctuary, an extraordinary number of serious cases have pushed August’s vet bills beyond $6,000, approximately three times our usual monthly veterinary budget.

We urgently need help replenishing our Emergency Veterinary Fund so we can cover Papa Swan’s upcoming diagnostics, continue his medications and be prepared if surgery becomes necessary.

Swans can live for 30 years or more. After everything Volodymyr and his sweet Odette endured, abandonment, the drought, the months of separation and finally finding their way back to one another, they deserve as many years together as we can possibly give them.

We are committed to doing everything within our power to help him make a full recovery.

If you can donate toward his care, please do. Every gift, regardless of its size, helps us protect the life these two fought so hard to rebuild together.

If you cannot donate, sharing their story is an equally meaningful way to help us reach the people who can.

For Volodymyr. For the mate who waited for him. And for all the years they still deserve together. Help us save his life once again.

Venmo:
Please make sure it is the account without any additional characters. Last four digits: 8541.

PayPal: [email protected]
Zelle: [email protected]
Website: https://buy.stripe.com/3cs2bAc8e2s06He8wx

09/02/2026

WHO’S READY FOR BEDTIME STORIES WITH GOATS??

When the sun goes down, the goats get sleepy, and just like little children at bedtime, they become wonderfully cuddly.

For our next Sanctuary Sunset, you can add a little lantern to your ticket and join us for an all-ages storytime in the goat pasture. Bring a chair or borrow one of ours, settle beneath the evening sky and watch the sun disappear as the stars come out over the mountains and the Denver skyline.

Then comes the magic: the goats begin gathering around us, leaning against chairs, asking for affection and settling in while we read them a bedtime story.

It is an experience guaranteed to make you laugh, make you cry, or simply leave you reflecting on the kind of peacefulness that becomes possible in a place filled with animals and compassion.

Sunset is at 7:21, but our evening together continues until 8:00. Come carry a lantern into the pasture and help us tuck the goats in for the night.

Saturday, September 12, 6:30-8pm

Get your ticket with a rechargeable LED lantern to light up your visit, or bring your own! Tickets here:

https://ticketstripe.com/Septembersunsets2026

08/27/2026

OLD THINGS NEEDED ASAP!

Your old sheets, stained towels and worn-out rugs could make life safer and more comfortable for someone in our chicken hospital.

The relentless heat and our overwhelmingly elderly population have brought an influx of patients into our hospital recently, and we are running very low on linens.

We especially need:

• Sheets of any size
• Towels of any size
• Rugs of any kind

We use sheets and towels for bedding, hospital enclosures and daily patient care. Rugs cover our slippery floors so that elderly birds and patients with arthritis can move around safely and comfortably without struggling for traction.

Please don’t buy anything new for us. Between the dirt, dust, feathers and dander, these items eventually reach a point when they can no longer reasonably be washed. What we need are the old, stained or worn linens you might otherwise throw away.

If fall cleaning, or simply replacing that towel you’ve owned since 2007, is on your list, Broken Shovels is the perfect place to give those linens one last useful life.

They may no longer look beautiful in your home, but to someone healing in our hospital, they can mean a clean bed, safer steps and a little more comfort.

We have a wooden spool near the red gates for drop off anytime that is convenient for you, or bring them along to our next event! Your trash is our most treasured cozy bed ♥️

Please share far and wide!

08/26/2026

Broken Shovels may have begun, just a tiny little seed planted, when I was four years old, sitting beside my grandpa’s record player, listening to Dolly Parton sing about two little orphans outside in the cold.

I have never said that out loud before. I don’t think I understood it until today.

My grandpa had the 45 single of “Here You Come Again.” On the other side was a song called “Me and Little Andy.”

In his great big family room, he had one of those beautiful old console record players, the kind that looked like an enormous piece of furniture and could automatically begin the record again when it reached the end. I would listen to that song for hours and hours.

“Me and Little Andy” tells the story of a little girl and her puppy arriving at a stranger’s door on a bitterly cold night. They are hungry, freezing and alone, and they ask to come inside.

But the theme stuck with me: Someone small and vulnerable was out in the cold. Someone heard them asking for help. And someone opened the door.

My nickname was Andee, which made the record feel as though it had somehow been made especially for me.

But Dolly gave me and generations of children who grew up without much money something even greater than that. Through the stories she told about poverty, her family and the mountains where she came from, she made poor kids feel that we belonged to something.

She never treated poverty as proof that someone was less intelligent, less worthy or less capable of becoming extraordinary. She showed us that there was dignity in where we came from and that wealth had very little to do with the measure of a life.

Throughout her long career, Dolly returned again and again to the same belief that would eventually become the heart of Broken Shovels: when everything else is stripped away, compassion and kindness are what truly matter.

I didn’t know the words sanctuary, rehabilitation or rescue when I was sitting beside that record player. But Dolly was already teaching me what they meant.

Someone vulnerable is outside the door. You let them in.

Over the past fifteen years, I have opened my door to hundreds of little orphans. Mine have not been human children standing on a porch. They have arrived covered in mud, blood, flies or the remnants of their own broken shells. They have been abandoned lambs, motherless calves, newborn rats, infant mice, pigeons, sparrows, bottle puppies and kittens and countless other tiny lives already failed by the world.

And I have had more than a warm bowl of porridge to offer them. There have been incubators and oxygen chambers, syringes and feeding tubes, fluids and medicines. There have been countless nights spent trying to persuade one tiny body to remain in this world until morning.

But underneath all of it, the story has always been the same:

Someone small and vulnerable arrived at the door. And someone opened it.

I don’t know whether Broken Shovels would exist without that little girl sitting beside her grandpa’s record player, listening to Dolly Parton tell that heartbreaking story again and again.

I don’t know whether every orphan I have held since has been, in some small way, another Little Andy whom I was determined to help make it safely through the night.

But I know that before I was old enough to give goodness a name, Dolly Parton taught me what it looked like.

Today, the world lost Dolly. And I am only now realizing that I may owe her one of the deepest and most important thank-yous of my life.

The best way I know to thank her is to do what Dolly did: turn compassion into action. So, in her memory, I am asking each of us to perform one deliberate act of kindness, large or small.

Feed someone. Protect someone. Give what you can. Open a book for a child. Open the door for an animal. Help a stranger. Forgive someone. Notice a life the rest of the world has overlooked.

Let’s call it “Do It Like Dolly.”

Do one compassionate thing in her honor, and then invite someone else to do the same. It does not need to be grand, public or expensive. It only needs to make this world a little gentler for someone else.

Dolly spent her life reminding us that kindness is not weakness or sentiment. It is a choice. It is an action. And in the end, it may be the only thing we leave behind that truly matters.

Thank you, Dolly, from little Andee, and from every orphan whose knock I have heard because you taught me to listen.

Somewhere, someone small is still outside the door.

May we all keep opening it.

08/22/2026

Our visitors always want to take a goat friend home with them, and now they can!

Our brand-new goat sponsorship gift has arrived, and it is somehow even more adorable in person.

This sweet little goat is part of an entirely new collection of sponsorship gifts and merchandise created to help support the animals who live here. These special gifts are exclusively available to in-person sanctuary visitors, making tonight’s Sanctuary Sunset your first chance to see all the new designs, choose your favorite animal sponsorship, and take home a tiny stuffed sanctuary resident of your own.

Your sponsorship helps provide food, shelter, medical care, and lifelong safety for the real animals who call Broken Shovels home, and gives you an awfully cute little reminder of the life you are helping make possible.

Come see everything tonight, meet the animals your support makes possible, and help us make this final Sanctuary Sunset of the summer a truly wonderful evening.

Get your tickets now—we would love to spend tonight with you.

https://ticketstripe.com/Augustsunsets2026

08/22/2026

One more chance to check something truly wonderful off your summer bucket list: Sanctuary Sunset is tonight.

Come spend a beautiful summer evening among rescued animals, eat incredible food, and be part of a community of people who want to create and enjoy a world filled with more compassion, connection, and joy.

The Savage Beet will be here serving a fantastic menu including loaded nachos, five-spice Asian tacos, chili mac and cheese, chili cheese fries, and their Pride Picnic Bowl. Bean Boy Foods and Italian Heart Vegan Soul Kitchen will also be joining us with samples and desserts.

And then there are the animals, the real hosts of the evening. Brownie will be expecting butt scratches. The goats will expect absolutely everyone to admire them. And hundreds of rescued animals will have the opportunity to feel, for one evening, like they are the single most special animal who has ever existed, with your help.

Good food. Rescued animals. A Colorado summer evening. A whole community of animal lovers gathered in one beautiful place.

If you have been thinking about coming, this is your sign. Buy your tickets now, and come spend tonight with us.

https://ticketstripe.com/Augustsunsets2026

08/20/2026

More than 500,000 people have now seen the photograph of this tiny baby on the day he was found.

I didn’t update everyone immediately because I truly didn’t know what his future would look like. He was cold, starving, dehydrated, and profoundly weak. His back legs were barely working, and we couldn’t yet know whether that weakness would disappear as his little body recovered, or whether he had sustained a permanent injury.

So we kept him warm. We kept him fed. We gave him time.

And slowly, the tiny body that had almost stopped working began to come back to life.

Today, he is a completely normal, fully mobile baby mouse. He runs, climbs, burrows, eats, grooms, and conducts all of the extremely important business entrusted to a very small mouse.

But there is something I need people to understand: if his legs had never recovered, he still would have stayed.

A mouse is already a life that much of the world does not consider worthy of rescue. Add a disability, and that life falls even farther down the invisible list of who gets saved. We do not believe in that list.

If he had needed a carefully adapted home for the rest of his life, we would have built one around him. His world might have been smaller, softer, and shaped differently, but it still would have belonged entirely to him.

His recovery is wonderful. His life was always worthy.

He was always perfect.

Now he is also very fast.

08/19/2026

BROWNIE HAS MADE HER DEMANDS…

She doesn’t know that ticket sales for our final Sanctuary Sunset of the summer are still very low. She only knows that when people arrive, it is finally time for one of her favorite things in the world: butt scratches.

During Sanctuary Sunset, she walks right up to visitors and demands their attention. If you fail to understand the assignment quickly enough, she may even butt-check you to clarify exactly what she came for.

She will make her dramatic little spitty faces at first, but once you find the right spot, the butt-scratch face appears. Her lips start moving. Her little legs start dancing. And suddenly you understand that you have been personally selected for a very important job.

I went into the pasture to make this video about Brownie. By the time I looked down, I was surrounded by turkeys and goats who had also decided that they needed my attention.

That is what these evenings are like. You cannot spend five minutes among the animals before someone is leaning against you, following you, asking for scritches, or quietly choosing to stand beside you.

Our final Sanctuary Sunset of the summer is going to be such a special evening. The Savage Beet food truck will be here serving dinner, with Bean Boy Foods and Italian Heart Vegan Soul Kitchen bringing samples of their famous “bean bacon” and desserts that you can usually only dream about. We have also just received our new sponsorship merchandise, the absolute cutest little stuffed renditions of the animals who live here.

Dinner, dessert, tiny stuffed sanctuary residents, an evening on the farm, and several hundred animals prepared to behave as though you came exclusively to see them. If you haven’t crossed “alpaca butt scratches” off your summer bucket list, now is your chance!

These are the most beautiful hours here. Dinner is finished. The heat of the day begins to break. The animals become active again, and everyone seems ready to visit, investigate, and with very little respect for personal space, welcome you into their evening.

There are still far too many empty spaces for our final summer Sunset. I can only hope enough people come to make every animal here feel, for one evening, like they are the single most special animal who has ever existed.

Come spend the end of a summer day inside their world. Brownie will be waiting…and she expects you to arrive prepared to work.

THIS SATURDAY, August 22nd, 6:30-8pm
Get tickets here:

https://ticketstripe.com/Augustsunsets2026

08/19/2026

BROWNIE HAS MADE HER DEMANDS…

She doesn’t know that ticket sales for our final Sanctuary Sunset of the summer are still very low. She only knows that when people arrive, it is finally time for one of her favorite things in the world: butt scratches.

During Sanctuary Sunset, she walks right up to visitors and demands their attention. If you fail to understand the assignment quickly enough, she may even butt-check you to clarify exactly what she came for.

She will make her dramatic little spitty faces at first, but once you find the right spot, the butt-scratch face appears. Her lips start moving. Her little legs start dancing. And suddenly you understand that you have been personally selected for a very important job.

I went into the pasture to make this video about Brownie. By the time I looked down, I was surrounded by turkeys and goats who had also decided that they needed my attention.

That is what these evenings are like. You cannot spend five minutes among the animals before someone is leaning against you, following you, asking for scritches, or quietly choosing to stand beside you.

Our final Sanctuary Sunset of the summer is going to be such a special evening. The Savage Beet food truck will be here serving dinner, with Bean Boy Foods and Italian Heart Vegan Soul Kitchen bringing samples of their famous “bean bacon” and desserts that you can usually only dream about. We have also just received our new sponsorship merchandise, the absolute cutest little stuffed renditions of the animals who live here.

Dinner, dessert, tiny stuffed sanctuary residents, an evening on the farm, and several hundred animals prepared to behave as though you came exclusively to see them. If you haven’t crossed “alpaca butt scratches” off your summer bucket list, now is your chance!

These are the most beautiful hours here. Dinner is finished. The heat of the day begins to break. The animals become active again, and everyone seems ready to visit, investigate, and with very little respect for personal space, welcome you into their evening.

There are still far too many empty spaces for our final summer Sunset. I can only hope enough people come to make every animal here feel, for one evening, like they are the single most special animal who has ever existed.

Come spend the end of a summer day inside their world. Brownie will be waiting…and she expects you to arrive prepared to work.

THIS SATURDAY, August 22nd, 6:30-8pm
See ticket link 👇

Broken Shovels Farm Sanctuary

09/04/2026

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09/02/2026

08/27/2026

08/26/2026

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